George Frederick Handel - Hallelujah Chorus in D Major (from The Messiah)

And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

- Revelation 11:15

And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

- Revelation 19:6

The biggest mistake that Classical Music (as commonly understood) can make is to divorce itself from its audience.  This divorce explains almost all of why modern Classical Music is such a wasteland of ugliness.  In earlier days, Classical composers were Rock Stars, and the audience treated them as such.  That flame, while flickering, is still burning and even showing signs of roaring back.  Handel's "Messiah" shows that.

Image via Wikipedia

It's a myth that everyone stands for the Hallelujah Chorus because the King was so overwhelmed when he heard it that he lept to his feet.  The rest of the audience of course would have scrambled to theirs as well - nobody sat while the King stood, Back In The Day.  It seems that the story isn't true but I must say that the hair on the back of my neck stood up when the audience rose en masse the first time I performed this.  They also sang along to us, claiming this small portion of Handel's master work as theirs.

That continues to this day with the wonderful new tradition of Classical Music "Flash Mobs".  Essentially, this is music swooping down on people who, unsuspecting, are simply living out an ordinary day of their lives.  The People always rise to this occasion, joining with delight the sudden and seemingly random outbreak of culture.  Here's one example, from a shopping mall in Philadelphia, accompanied by the world's largest pipe organ:



Sure, the camera work is bad (it's mostly caught from within the audience), and the sound quality is amateurish (same problem).  Watch the people - caught without practice, or even a script, they join in the singing.  They take a stuffy Symphony Hall performance and make it their own.  They understand - everyone involved understands - that this is our culture.  The result is a performance done for the joy of the doing by both professionals and audience.  I cannot put into words how beautiful I see these social acts of culture.

And although I have not sung this for twenty years, to this day I could do a creditable job on the baritone part from memory - and could do it justice if I found the script lost somewhere in the library here in Camp Borepatch.

This is Classical Music, as it was understood back in the days when composers were Rock Stars.  And quite frankly, some composers - notably Handel - are still rock stars.  Just watch the people there when the organ kicks off and the chorus unloads the first line.  The audience entirely gets what's going on and joins in, with delight.

This is a meditation on the upcoming holiday.  The Lord Messiah was not sent for a small elite, he was sent for everyone, even shopping mall patrons.  The music of this coming day is one that everyone is invited to join in.  For those that want a more Symphony Hall version, delivered by professionals to a passive audience, here's a quite good one.  You can see the audience standing as the music begins, but while White Tie is very elegant indeed, it lacks the pure participatory joy of the flash mob (but makes up for it with a pretentious introduction by the snotty conductor.  Watch it anyway - it's backed up by artillery from a full trumpet battery). 



But even this performance - of a symphony on stage singing to a passive audience - even this gets no standard ovation.  The audience roars their approval, because they understand that this triumphant music is ours.  After all, it was written by perhaps the first Rock Star.

And all I can say is "Amen" - which fortunately the first Rock Star thoughtfully included in his Oratorio.  It begins with what can only be described as the theological closing parentheses to the opening that you have just heard.  Then it ends with what may be the finest classical music ever written.  The part that starts around 6:30 is what I think is the most spiritually moving music ever written.



On this Sunday before Christmas I hope you find this as inspiring as I do.  We are surrounded by marvels, marvels that are not to be viewed from a distance but rather to be grasped to our souls. Marvels written by Rock Stars.  Marvels to sing along with.  Go ahead - the video even displays the score for you.  The Lord doesn't care if you're on key or not.  After all, this coming Holy Day is not for an elite, it's for us.  Theologically speaking, I mean.  It's glorious.  Join in the Glory.

Amen.

What "Social Networking" means to you

Yes, it's exactly like that.  Facebook does not have your privacy as their top priority.  Or any priority.

Celtic Woman - O Holy Night

Great song, pretty good performance.

OK, I'm a sucker

I picked up a box of the Hornady Zombie ammo for a stocking stuffer. Dang, that's a rip off.


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UPDATE 22 December 2012 17:52: Bob in the comments asked if there was much ammo there - the case was half empty, and the only .380 was either Winchester or the Zombie stuff.  72 cents a round for the Winchester and 96 cents a round (!) for the Hornady Zombie.  Yikes.

But it was to have stocking stuffers.  Because ammo makes a great stocking stuffer.

Wayne LaPierre has to go

I've been thinking about the NRA press conference. There are some good proposals in their plan, and Asa Hutchinson's part of the presser was what the whole conference should have been: restrained, on-topic, reasonable, focused on actions and benefits.  The problem for Asa is that he came on the mic after LaPierre's Lovecraftian performance.

There's a reason that this happened: the Iron Law of Bureaucracy tells us that organizations end up getting captured by Organization Men, and those tend to form closed intellectual bubbles.  The NRA organization under the direction of Wayne LaPierre does not have anyone who was able or willing to challenge him on the parts of his speech that can only be described as creepy:

• A national database of the mentally ill?  Every heard of the Soviet mental health system, Wayne?  Has anyone on your staff?
• Most schools don't need cops.  Some already have them because of gang violence.  Saying that every school in the country needs armed, uniformed officers would not only be insanely expensive for no benefit, it has quite unpleasant connotations.  You were so over the top that Asa Hutchinson explicitly contradicted you, saying that all schools did not need police.
• The finger pointing at video games is nothing short of embarrassing.  Was there really nobody there at NRA who dared to say to you Orlly?

That's the problem right there. The NRA Board of Directors need to replace LaPierre, he's damaged the organization structure.  They probably can't do it for 6 or 12 months because that would look terrible and would be (deliberately) misrepresented by the Media.  But he has to go, and the NRA needs a new head that will rebuild the organization to one where there can be real internal critiques of major policy positions before the klieg lights and microphones power up.

Rascal Flatts with SheDaisy - Twist Of The Magi

(Image source)

I must admit that I'm not a Rascal Flatts fan.  Sure, they've sold a bazillion albums with their pseudo (that means fake) Country-Pop sound.  Not a fan.  But this is the season for us to ponder the birth of a Redeemer, and so in that spirit we see that even one gravely sinned against can still forgive.

At a price.

SheDaisy is an incredibly talented trio of sisters who write and perform their own Country songs.  Here at Camp Borepatch, we're huge fans although it must be admitted that they too shade to the commercial Country Pop side of the aisle.  But this song perfectly captures the spirit of Redeemer's Grace that is so needed in this jaded, commercialized season.  It's one of my favorite Christmas songs, even with Rascal Flatts.  Yeah, it's that good.



Twist Of The Magi (Songwriters: Kristyn Osborn, Marcus Hummon)

Shedaisy: I sold your Rolex
To buy that gold Versace dress
Rascal Flatts: I set free your whiny French poodle
So you could get your beauty rest

And I did it all for you
I did it all (I did it all) for you
This Christmas (This Christmas)
All your dreams (All your dreams)
Will come true

Rascal Flatts: I put your mother on a greyhound (you did what?)
You always hoped she'd have the chance to see the world-now she can
Shedaisy: I torched your Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues (No, no, no,no)
So I could be your only girl-and now I am

And I did it all for you
I did it all (I did it all) for you
This Christmas (This Christmas)
All your dreams (All your dreams)
Will come true

Shedaisy: How can I forget
All you've done for me
I'll get you yet
Rascal Flatts: This is the season to give
But I can never forgive the damage that you've done
(Damage that you've done)
This must be love

Shedaisy: I sank your bass boat (Not my bass boat, no, no, no)
So you'd have more time to spend with me
Rascal Flatts: I hocked your grandma's diamond earrings (AHHHHH!)
For the down payment on my SUV
Shedaisy: Fully loaded, heated seats, in hunter green-is this for me?

And I did it all for you
I did it all (I did it all) for you
This Christmas (This Christmas)
All your dreams (All your dreams)
Will come true

This Holiday season, may the spirit of Our Redeemer shine down on you and yours.  May that spirit inform your response even to all that they do for you.  Especially to all that they do for you.

¡Caliente!

Not many people have ever done Feliz Navidad better than Jose Feliciano.  This gives him a run for his money.

Why police in schools is a bad idea

Short answer: it won't do anything useful, it will be expensive, and it will further the Police State.

Long answer: It's Security Theater.  Expensive, intrusive Security Theater.

The world is full of soft targets.  Someone motivated to shoot up a soft target has lots of choices.  There's nothing that we can do to change that.

But it gets worse.  If the proper reaction to the Connecticut school shooting is to put armed police in every school, then the obvious proper reaction when an evil nut job shoots up (say) a hospital is armed police in every hospital.  Then when nut jobs turn their sights on libraries, we put police there.  Then grocery stores, then Starbuck's, then gas stations.


We've seen this game before, played out by the TSA: terrorists take guns onto planes and so we have metal detectors.  Then they put bombs in suitcases and so all our luggage gets X-Ray'ed.  Then they take bombs in their shoes and we have to take our shoes off in security.  Then they use liquids and mothers can't take bottles of breast milk.

It's a stupid game and we should stop playing.  There literally is no end, either to the TSA's idiocy or to Wayne LaPierre's.  Actually I just lied - there is an end, and it's called a Police State.  No thanks.

The mistake that the War On Terror™ warriors make is the same as the mistake the gun banners make, which is the same mistake the NRA just made.  Sprinkling Magic Government Security Dust™ on something doesn't make anything more, you know, secure.

It's been said over and over that there are only two things that have made air travel safe in the 9/11 age: reinforced cockpit doors and passengers who know that they have to fight for their lives.  It's harsh to say a week after the kids were gunned down, but the same thing applies to mass shootings.  The school had locked doors, what was lacking was the ability to fight for their lives.  That applies to schools, hospitals, libraries, stores, and to all the other infinitude of soft targets.

Neither the gun banners nor the NRA are willing to talk about this.  And so they talk about pretty lies that are security kabuki,

It's a stupid game and we should stop playing, because lives literally are on the line.

Thoughts on the NRA presser

First thought is that it's always fun to watch the media get called on the carpet.  Kudos to the NRA for grabbing the beast by the horns and letting them know that the contempt is mutual.  And well done for challenging them that their reporting is dishonest.  I don't think that they used the word but everyone knew what they meant.  This will boost the NRA with their target audience, and it's hard to see how the press could get worse after this.

I'm luke warm to putting cops in every school.  Quite frankly, it smacks of Police Statism, and something in the back of my head is whispering that if the cops are going to be there anyway, and since there's nothing going on (school shootings are quite rare), perhaps Officer Friendly could help out with, say drug searches.  This will not play out well - certainly not an improvement over allowing teachers and administrators to carry.

The part about cracking down on violent films and video games is idiotic.  Quite frankly, it's Junk Science.  AFAIK there are no studies that show a causal effect between games and films on the one hand, and school shootings on the other.  We sneer at the gun banners and their magical thinking.  This is magical thinking from the NRA.  I actually think that LaPierre knows this, but wanted a lightening rod to deflect criticism.  If that's the case, then this is breathlessly cynical.

So overall I score this as a wash.  Too bad.

In which I get my tinfoil hat on

Long time readers know that it's not often that I don my Wookie Suit and hit the low crawl down the slit trench.  But this makes my skin crawl, because it's horrifyingly plausible. No, it's not about guns.  It's about electric cars.  With the bankruptcies going through the automotive and "Green" power industries, you know what's some of the most valuable assets for liquidation?

Patents.  Thar's Intellectual Property in them thar hills.

And guess who's buying up all the patents for anything related to electric car power plants?  The oil companies.

I see you rolling your eyes, and just stop it.  If you really think it through it makes sense:

If you buy an electric car, what happens?  You end up tooling down the road in an electric car.

If you tool down the road in a fully electric ride what happens?  You look like a dork.

This is just your wiser big brother Exxon-Mobil watching out for you.  You'll thank him some day.

Huh. Still here.

Stupid Mayans*.

Now I guess I have to fill out my HR self-evaluation for my annual review. Oh, and it's winter now** too.  Yay.

* Yeah, yeah, "Maya" not "Mayans".  Keep that up and I'm going to start talking about "high capacity ammunition clips".  Still trying to figure out just wtf the "shoulder thing that goes up" is, though.

** Congratulations to  my readers from the Antipodes, where it's now summer.  Me, I blame Global Warming for all the hot weather you've been having lately.

aptget install steam

This is cool, and I am *so* trying it out:

The Steam for Linux beta program is now open to the public! In order to participate in the beta, you must download the latest Steam Linux client (found here) or upgrade your existing Steam for Linux client to the latest version.

It's a Debian package, and so it's super simple.  May need to upgrade my video, though.  My display may not be up for something this revolutionary.

If you're not familiar with Steam or Debian packages, you just might have a life.

Guns and mental illness

Figures that one of the best analyses would come from someone in the mental health care field.  Recommended.  I like to think that I'm decently grounded in the subject, and I picked up a lot from this.

A short review of The Hobbit

There's a big post that will have to wait, but here's the pocket guide to the movie:

If you liked the Lord Of The Rings movies, you'll like this.  If the Lord Of The Rings movies bugged the Tolkien purist in you, then this will bug you.

Oh yeah, if you bought the soundtrack to the Lord Of The Rings, you already have all the music from this one.

Shark, jumped

NASA Johnson Style remix ...



This is clever, but when bureaucracies jump on a meme, it has the stench of death.  But I dare say that I'll soon get jaded by these Intarwebz Memes from the Internet Super Highway, so I'm glad that NASA got their licks in early.  1.5 MegaViews on Youtube.  You go, NASA!

Damn. Maybe I need to get an EBT card

Seems you can buy all sorts of stuff with them.  Damn.

Herding cats

Suppose you were a young tech geek (with no girlfriend to, err, distract you).  Suppose you like disassembling things and rebuilding them to do different things.  Suppose you notice that your cat likes to chase the red laser dot.  So what do you do?

Well, you might disassemble a Radio Controlled (RC) car and rebuild it to be a remotely controllable cat laser harness:

Cat Car uses a steering wheel controller with an attached Arduino and gyroscope / accelerometer, which communicate with a cat harness via an XBee. The movements control a servo on the back of the cat, which moves around a laser pointer, propelling the cat forward, thus allowing the user to remotely control the cat.

They have video at the link.  I guess that I only have two things to say about this:

1. This is why were were able to beat the godless Ruskie Commie bastards.

2. Lissa, you're welcome.

But this brings to mind what is perhaps the greatest Superbowl commercial ever:



Git along thar, little kitty.

This just in

I found myself cooking for two teenage boys. I made my "Bacon cornbread with BBQ fried corn with bacon" (check my "food" tag). This time I used grits instead of cornmeal, because that's what I had.

The boys snarled it down. Probably fed then for $5. And I caught one licking the plate (srsly). I'm so proud.

I like cornbread made with grits a *lot* more than with cornmeal. It has a LOT more texture than cornmeal.

Oh yeah, bacon is good too.


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Anonymous hacks the Westboro Baptist Church

It seems that the latest from the WBC crowd is that they were going to picket at the funerals for the kids shot in Connecticut.  Action, reaction:

Over the weekend, Anonymous was stirred to action against an old nemesis: the Westboro Baptist Church. The most recent feud came in the wake of WBC’s appalling reaction to the Sandy Hook shooting Friday in Newtown, CT. Anonymous’s offensive increased in intensity as WBC announced plans to picket a vigil for the elementary school’s victims. The hacker collective has since managed to hijack a high-profile Twitter account as well as take down WBC’s site, among other claimed victories.

...

Today, Anonymous scored several more successes: godhatesfags.com, the website of WBC, went down, possibly as a result of DDoS attacks by anonymous members. Other high-profile hackers have joined in, such as @cosmothegod, who hijacked the personal Twitter account of WBC spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper and retweeted several posts about his victory. Anonymous’s official Twitter account also claims that its members managed to change Phelps-Roper’s desktop background to gay porn, uncovered alleged social security numbers of key WBC members through the doxing process, and successfully filed for a death certificate for Phelps-Roper. The group has since tweeted out the alleged hotel where WBC members were staying and offered an IRC channel specifically to talk about its #OpWBC movement.

Not a fan of Anonymous, and not a fan of cyber vigilantism.  But it's interesting to see what sort of thing attracts their attention, other than anti-Government anarchism.

How to talk to Progressives about Gun Control

Aretae, as is his wont, brings The Smart.

What I like about this is that by starting the discussion from the perspective of a hypothetical thought experiment, it breaks the participants out of the emotional starting point that drives 99.9% of them.  At that point, there's the opportunity for the Buddha to lead them to Enlightenment.

The one thing that I'd add (because unlike Aretae, I can get pretty nasty) is when the Progressives drop back into emotion (because they don't like having to argue actual outcomes) it offers the opportunity to say "This is the problem with Gun Control.  It's not rational, it's hysterical.  No wonder it doesn't work."  That will usually close down the conversation (and leave everyone thinking that Borepatch needs to learn some manners), but has the virtue of letting everyone know precisely where I stand on the issue.

It also has the virtue of being precisely correct, which just annoys everyone even more.

Comment spam

It seems to be running not quite ten times as much as real comments.  It's leaking through Google's spam filters more often, too.  Is anyone else seeing this?

I'd hate to block anonymous comments because there are real comments left that way, but cleaning up more than 100 spam comments a day is getting to be annoying.

If you want to be informed about Global Warming, this is mandatory viewing

It's long been known that there's a very close correlation between Solar Magnetic Activity (Sunspots) and climate. This is the best introduction to the subject that I've seen.



This is science that the Scientific Community is not interested in pursuing, perhaps because there are no financial grants to be had by saying that an increased Government control of the economy won't Save The Earth™. The film actually shows this is gory detail, as Scientists® confront Svensmark telling him that his experiment is "worthless" without giving a scientific reason why.

It also explains how Sagittarius killed the Dinosaurs.  This is long time-scales science.  And this is brutal:



OK, then.  But if you actually want to, you know, understand the science (as opposed to The Science®), then this is must-see Borepatch TV.  And read the links.  The next time that some smarmy Prog Bastard sneers that "the Scienciness™ is settled", ask him about the Svenskmark Hypothesis and it's scientific strengths and weaknesses.  And then stand back and enjoy him squirming.

And if you really want to twist the knife, let him run down and then turn to someone else and say "He doesn't know."

Your Holiday Distopia

Brought to you by the legendary Pogues.



Man, what a great song.

Libertarian Society, Socialist Society

I only did it because Patrick made me suggested it.

Mental Health Break, part II

Just go read.

You're welcome.

Better not let Calvin get a gun

He's clearly a mental nut case.

Mental Health break

It's easy to get overwhelmed with the bad news that is screamed so hysterically at us.  It's easy to become cynical, and to doubt the good faith and yes, the humanity of our fellow men.  I must confess that I succumb to this myself from time to time.  It makes me ranty, and while I've been accused of being "unreasonably civilized", I still feel like the Angels of my Better Nature don't often sing.  At least lately.

These Angels of our Better Nature do sing.  This is perhaps the best thing that you will see all day.



I love watching the audience.  The surprise of the "random acts of culture" peels away the cynical, hardened veneer of getting through the day to reveal a humanity that is entirely appealing.  These people get what's going on, in an entirely unironic way.  They are the ones that the Cultural Elite likes to sneer at.  That tells you everything that you need to know about the Cultural Elite.

There, I managed to turn an entirely inspiring, humanity-redeeming moment into a rant.  Good think that I'm "unreasonably civilized."

Gun Control proponents: still racist

Gun Control has racist roots, forged in the fire of the racist early Progressive era.  It was said, back in those Bad old Days that Negros weren't temperamentally suited to have guns.  So what's happened since, as Progressives have carefully expunged all vestiges of racism from polite society?

You could not imagine another gun law added on the top of the stack of restrictions on gun ownership in the city of Chicago. We find the most extreme progressive politicians in control of both the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. You are not allowed to defend yourself against thugs, vandals, and gang bangers if you live in Cook County. What additional restriction could you impose on the cowering, fearful, barricaded citizenry?

If you want to discuss the impact on gun control in reducing tragedies of multiple murders with gun violence, then don't look to a school in Connecticut.

Odd, isn't it, that you get wall-to-wall shock-and-awe TV coverage of the blood of white children, but not a whisper of coverage about the much greater red river from black children.  Is it that Progressives don't care about black children, or that the example is not useful to their preferred narrative?  That black children are expendable in the Cause?

To ask the question is to know the answer.

Talking to Hipsters

Here's your translation guide.

Zoltan Kodály -- Variations on a Hungarian Folksong

Today is the birthday of Zoltan Kodály, the Hungarian composer and music educator.  His education technique (the Kodály Method) is popular around the world today and may be his greatest legacy.

That's too bad, because his music is particularly good.  Like other turn of the century composers like Edvard Grieg and Ralph Vaughan Williams, be made a study of the folk music of his native land.  Kodály was a pioneer of musical recordings, using phonographs to gather folk music from as early as 1905.

Today's selection represents him at the apex of his late-romantic era interpretive powers from a surprisingly late date (immediately before World War II).

Garlic in your soul

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Housecat

Spam poetry

Plants pretty
a almost whole
and seeks occasionally to
excitedly
restore the highest harmony
occasionally to the almost whole
of the patient's
being

Toby Keith and Willie Nelson - Beer For My Horses

(Image source)

A lot of people have trouble with the concept of evil.  Whether the evil is conscious (like the Gulag)  or whether it's unconscious (like Old Yeller), evil exists.  It walks among us.

It walked into a school in Connecticut yesterday.

A lot of people have trouble wrapping their brains around this idea.  That makes them paralyzed in a way that prior generations weren't.  You didn't have school shootings like this in the 1960s.  There's a good reason for that - there would almost certainly be a lot of guns in the cars in the school parking lot.  Evil may walk in on us, but with the right tools and attitude, it won't go home that night fully staffed.

Country Music gets a bad reputation with Right Thinking People® because it plainly speaks uncomfortable truths.  Toby Keith perhaps more than any other country artist has a bad reputation with Right Thinking People® because he keeps speaking uncomfortable truths, again and again.  Peter Jennings banned him from ABC because Keith refused to speak the expected Pretty Lies.

And so, to previous generations and their view of evil.  They thought that it was real, and that they might encounter it.  They thought that if they did, they would need to confront it, not run from it.  They did confront it, facing down two races of Supermen in World War II and then the Soviet Bear afterwards.  They knew how to deal with the evil that walked into that school yesterday.

This song shows that some of us still remember.



Beer For My Horses (Songwriters: James Stroud, Toby Keith)

Well a man come on the 6 o'clock news
Said somebody's been shot, somebody's been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole a car
Somebody got away
Somebody didn't get too far yeah
They didn't get too far

Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street for all the people to see that

Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune
We'll all meet back at the local saloon
We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We've got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send 'em all to their maker and he'll settle 'em down
You can bet he'll set 'em down 'cause

Older generations believed that you confronted evil - especially the two legged kind - to protect the weak.  The shooter seems to have been very ill, but that doesn't change the evil nature of what he did, not the justice in an "Old Yeller" solution once he had started shooting.  I hope that society remembers what our elders knew.

I'm angry about the school shooting

"Angry" doesn't describe it, actually.

People's reaction to this atrocity enrage me:

• The Atlanta Falcons will have a minute of silence before their game on Monday.  This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future.  It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive.  Hey Atlanta Falcons, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future.  Just STFU.
  
• ESPN has told their employees not to tweet anything until Monday.  This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future.  It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive.  Hey ESPN, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future.  Just STFU.
• The Usual Suspects - I'm looking at you, Piers Morgan - are blathering idiocy about too many guns and the typical hand wringing.  This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future.  It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive.  Hey Piers Morgan, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future.  Just STFU.
• Politicians, School Boards, and Principals are intimidated by powerful lobbying interests, afraid to take common sense steps that would actually be effective in stopping this sort of thing in the future.  This infuriates me because these people take our coin, and are too scared to actually do what everyone knows needs to be done.  Our children are literally dieing because these people are too timid to do what needs doing.

What needs to be done is not more gun control. The UK banned guns after a horrific shooting at a kindergarten. Since that ban, gun crime has doubled in the UK, while it's plummeted here.  The Police didn't off the evil scum who shot those kids in Connecticut - he offed himself.  This is typical - the Police didn't shoot the Columbine shooter, or the Virgina Tech shooter.  No, we need a practical, common sense approach to school shootings.

We need armed teachers.

Right now, the only person with a gun in a school is an evil, criminal nut case.  Everyone is disarmed, by deliberate intent.  The nutcase will have maybe a half hour to work his evil before going out in a blaze of CNN.  Given the utter failure of the UK's almost complete ban on guns, this wouldn't change if we did the same here.

It would change completely if we had armed teachers.

#2 Son goes to a High School with 1,800 kids.  It has a lot more than 100 teachers.  If even 10% were armed, it would be simply impossible for an evil nut case to kill many kids before being dropped by the righteous return fire from a teacher.

And I am absolutely infuriated by all the people who are horrified by this suggestion, who instead cling to proven ineffective proposals like more gun control.  Infuriated, because these people either know better, or should know better, and instead choose to let our children bleed.  People who choose not to protect them.  People who refuse to trust our children's teachers, who rather take refuge in public displays of how sensitive they are.  People who flinch from confronting evil, even to protect children.

People who choose to enable evil, rather than confront it.  They dance in children's blood, to show how nice they are.  To show that they're better than we are.

It enrages me - makes me rage until my floor turns to lava.

UPDATE 14 December 2012 21:23: Omnia vincit amor. A calmer post that's worth your while.

And a prayer.  Amen.

UPDATE 16 December 2012 21:34: An outbreak of sanity:

A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to pass a law specifically allowing teachers and staff to pack heat when classes begin later this month.

Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.

Of course sanity breaks out in Texas first.

Australian Prime Minister predicts end of the world

Seems the Mayans were right, at least the ones who lived in Australia.



Not sure why the speech is repeated in the video, but it's pretty dang funny.

Constitutional Carry of Schedule I Narcotics

Data are your friends.  They tell you things that seem counter-intuitive, which tells you that you really don't understand the situation at all.

For example, the violent crime rate has plunged at the same time that the number of legally owned and carried firearms has soared.  That's a fact - the data are clear.  While this doesn't necessarily prove the "more guns, less crime" thesis, it sure demolishes the "more guns, more violent crime" thesis.

Likewise, decriminalizing drugs - basically all drugs, including not just weed but heroin, cocaine, and crystal meth - results in lower addiction rates:

In most respects, the [2001 Portuguese] law seems to have worked: serious drug use is down significantly, particularly among young people; the burden on the criminal-justice system has eased; the number of people seeking treatment has grown; and the rates of drug-related deaths and cases of infectious diseases have fallen. Surprisingly, political opposition has been tepid and there has never been a concerted repeal effort.

This will strike some as counter-intuitive.  If it does, it means that's because some of the information you thought was true isn't.  Or it is true but there is more important information that you're not considering in your analysis.

The data suggest a program of Constitutional Carry of decriminalized drugs.  Seems a lot of folks might want to think about this.

We now return you to our regular scheduled blog.

Tiger bacon

Your argument is invalid.

The Angel of Fredericksburg

December 13, 1862 saw the Union Army of the Potomac on the march.  President Lincoln, ever impatient for battle and indifferent to the cost sent the army south into Virginia.  They were about to find out the cost at Fredericksburg where they repeatedly charged entrenched Confederates.  This was the battle where General Lee was overheard to say It is well war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it! The fighting was horrific, with men caught up in a primal hand-to-hand combat.

But as the sound of gunfire died away both sides could hear the groaning of the Federal wounded, littering the ground between the lines.  That's when the Angel appeared.  His name was Richard Kirkland, and he was a Confederate soldier.

He gathered up all the canteens he could carry and went out to tend the wounded and dieing.  And something strange happened on that battlefield - men who moments ago were struggling to tear each other's throats out regained their humanity.  For two hours Kirkland took water and comfort to the wounded, tending to every fallen man.  During those hours both sides held their fire, even though Kirkland had no flag of truce.

All he had was his decency, and that was enough.

Washington D.C. is filled with bronze statues of Union Generals on horseback.  You might say that they're a dime a dozen.  Common.

Fredericksburg has a bronze statue remembering a most uncommon man. 

Google Maps now available on iPhone

Not only will it save you from dieing in the desert, it will give you spoken turn by turn driving directions.  This brings the iPhone up to at least 2009 technology.

It's a free app available from the iStore or whatever it's called.

Dammit, wrong mob

Actively Disengaged rules.

iPhone mapping app considered dangerous

This is not my opinion, this is the advice of the Australian Police:

Australian police have cautioned drivers not to rely on Apple's new map programme after several drivers had to be rescued from the trails of Australia's second-largest national park, which is in the state of Victoria.

They had been looking for the town of Mildura but were sent to a National Park 70km (45 miles) away.

The BBC interviewed the police spokesman and asked him if he'd seen the map.  The police spokesman laughed.  But wait, it gets better:

Just when Apple thought it couldn't get any worse for its beleaguered Maps app, which has been leading motorists deep into the desert when they try to find the town of Mildura, The Register can reveal another SNAFU that could send travellers to an even less hospitable destination.

...

But even the city's enormous size doesn't explain why iOS 6 maps places the town in the spot depicted below, which appears to be miles from anything of note. Google Maps, for what it is worth, places the nearest road to the spot Apple picks for the town as being 141 kms from downtown Mount Isa.

That's fail that is potentially deadly, at least to anyone stupid enough to trust Apple's GPS directions.  But wait, it gets better:

A man who became dissatisfied with AT&T throttling data speeds on his iPhone has won a case against the carrier in small claims court.

The Associated Press reports that iPhone owner Matt Spaccarelli, who filed a complaint against AT&T after it began slowing down his data speeds, was awarded $850 earlier today.
Spaccarelli made the claim that AT&T purposely slowed down data speeds, despite the fact that he was subscribed to an "unlimited data" plan. This slowdown came after he had used 1.5GB to 2GB of data inside of one billing cycle, he told the court.

Yeah, that one is kind of old but just goes to show what a sucking chest wound of FAIL the iPhone has become.  I'm at the point of ditching mine and going to something that as a bit less suck in it.

America! F*** yeah!*

Where else can you do something like this?  Awesome.



Although I'm told that Dean Martin's version was the definitive rendition of this song.  But I can't find that with 40,000 synchronized Christmas lights.

* Apologies for the language.

This is my shocked face

Massive fraud in the scientific peer-review process, with scientists setting up fake email accounts for suggested "reviewers" (that actually are written by the scientist himself).

I'm shocked, do you hear?  Shocked.

Philosophy and the State

Simon Grey has a very interesting post in which he muses on why both Anarchism and Collectivism fail:

Both, ideologies fail because the logic and assumptions that are applied to the state are not applied to the operants of the state: individuals. Basically, anarchists have to assume that humans are intrinsically good while the government is systemically evil, while collectivists have to assume that humans are inherently bad while the state is systemically remedial. To put it in programming jargon, anarchists assume good in, garbage out; collectivists assume garbage in, good out. The state, though, is merely a mechanism and is neither intrinsically corrupting nor intrinsically remedial. If the effects of the state are remedial or corrupting, it is only because the people within (and in administration of) the state are remedial or corrupting.

It seems that there's a third possibility - that it's possible to explain the State's frequent sub-optimum actions without looking at the people involved as evil: The Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

 First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

The second group isn't necessarily evil, in fact most aren't evil at all.  They are entirely satisfied to accept outcomes that increase the power of the organization at the expense of the citizenry.  This is probably a more useful view (in a diagnostic/predictive sense) that good/evil.

Damn kids

Back on my lawn again.

My favorite Christmas song

I've held off until only two weeks from the day.  And this is just fun.

Analysis of Moore v. Madigan

David Kopel over at Volokh has a good, detailed analysis of the 7th Circuit overturning of Illinois' law banning firearm carry:

Moreover, Posner writes, the main purpose of Kachalsky’s inside/outside distinction was to justify intermediate scrutiny for restrictions on guns outside the home. In Madigan, “our analysis is not based on degrees of scrutiny, but on Illinois’s failure to justify the most restrictive gun law of any of the 50 states.” [Study tip for law students: 3-tier scrutiny doesn't explain everything. If a government prohibited everyone from speaking out loud in public places, a court does not need to use strict or intermediate scrutiny to decide if the ban is constitutional. Blanket bans on speaking in public places are per se void, and so are blanket bans on bearing arms in public places.]

I'm surprised at how well, duh all this legal analysis is.  The Left has twisted itself into knots to "prove" that the Constitution doesn't say what it plainly says.  The courts are now saying that up is up and down is down (and that "keep and bear" is "keep and bear").  Sanity is a refreshing change.

I'll be very interested to see how the Illinois Legislature handles this with the 180 day stay.  A sizable majority of the Legislators voted to allow concealed carry, so there's a decently strong bloc of support.  But what's interesting is that the laws prohibiting the carry of firearms will be void come next June.  If enough Legislators choose to do nothing, then no replacement law will pass and there will be no laws prohibiting open or concealed carry.  This has put a possible minority view in a very strong position.  It would be cool to see the Illinois gun grabbers hoist on their own petard, with their insanely restrictive outright ban leading to Constitutional Carry.

Environmentalists hate poor people

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth file suit to prohibit US development aid for low cost electricity to 3rd World countries:

Imagine the United States sending low-calorie food aid to Ethiopia in response to the global obesity epidemic. Absurd, right? Even if global waistline trends are worrisome, Ethiopians didn't create the problem. Such a policy would be futile since it would have no noticeable impact on the global aggregate.

Worse, while obesity may be a very real concern, Ethiopians are understandably more focused on undernourishment. The United States should aim instead to increase caloric intake in that part of the world. To punish those we should be helping when we can't even tackle the obesity problem at home makes the policy not only misguided, but also morally dubious.
Sadly, that is pretty much what the United States does on energy. In response to rising global carbon dioxide emissions, the U.S. government put restrictions on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a federal agency that is a principal tool for promoting investment in poor countries. A recent rule, added in response to a lawsuit brought by Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, imposes blind caps on the total CO2 emissions in OPIC's portfolio, which ends up barring the agency from nearly all non-renewable electricity projects.

Keep 'em poor and in the dark.  This brings to mind C. S. Lewis' quote:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Environmentalists sleep soundly at night, untroubled by their conscience.  Quite undeservedly, I might add.

Rope.

What really killed off the Dinosaurs?

It may have been volcanoes:

Tens of thousands of years of lava flow from the Deccan Traps, a volcanic region near Mumbai in present-day India, may have spewed poisonous levels of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and caused the mass extinction through the resulting global warming and ocean acidification, the research suggests.

The findings, presented Wednesday (Dec. 5) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, are the latest volley in an ongoing debate over whether an asteroid or volcanism killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago in the mass die-off known as the K-T extinction.

I've been skeptical of the asteroid-strike theory for quite a while.  I may be skeptical of this, too.

Stop touching it

Even when you're shopping.  Srlsy.

Imperial nicknames

Nobody did them like the Byzantines.  That rump of the Roman Empire traditionally dates to Constantine* the Great (there's a nickname for you, although his given name of Gaius Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus is pretty impressive just by itself).  But Magnus as a nickname is boring, dating back to Alexander, and so the Byzantines soon kicked it into high gear:

Leo I "The Butcher" began as a puppet of the barbarian Goths, but ended by taking real power into his own hands.  Extra credit for those who guess how he dealt with his Gothic "allies".

Leo II "The Little".  Six years old, reigned for a few months.  The Byzantine court has been described as a snake pit.  Little Leo could tell you why.

Justinian II "The Slit-Nosed".  The Byzantines loved to mutilate their enemies - castration, blinding, cutting the nose.  Justinian II didn't have the ability of his namesake (Justinian the Great).  Got to rock a very unusual nickname, though.

Constantine V "The Dung-Named".  Nicknames don't come any better than this.  You can think of him as the Richard III of the Byzantine Empire, someone who had his enemies write the history after he died.

Michael II "The Stammerer".  Best known for, well, you know.

Michael III "The Drunkard".  Best known for, well, you know.

And that doesn't even take us to A.D. 900 - there was another half millennium of Byzantine Autocrats to follow.  What strikes me is the incredibly disrespectful tone.  Constantine I Magnus would have had them all thrown to the lions or something.

This post is apropos nothing, bou can get even more on Wikipedia. 

* It's odd that only 40 years after Constantine, the Emperor Valens was killed by the Barbarians at Adrianople.  It was a violent age, and nor a lot of Imperators died peacefully in their beds.

Epic note is epic

(via)

What were the popular video games?

The real answer is that it changed over time.  This is pretty cool:

There are some people who earn a pretty good living by analyzing the video game industry. Then there are just average Joes who spend countless hours crunching the numbers and creating infographics just for the heck of it. Often it’s the latter that manages to really impress us.

Case in point — Reddit user NcikVGG, who combed through a huge database of 24,000 video games and charted out exactly how gaming tastes have changed over the years. The charts go back to 1975 and provide a fascinating look at how the industry has evolved.

Here's one of his charts:

More than a couple are well represented in Camp Borepatch.  The Mame Machine remains surprisingly popular.  They made some cool games back in the arcade days.

I'd like feminists if they were more like this

Ann Althouse unloads on Think Progress and gun control:

Put simply, Perkins was a victim of domestic violence by a man who was able to purchase guns....

She was a victim, a victim, a victim. Get it? If she'd dared to redefine herself, it would only have been worse. Grandma and baby might have died in a gun-slinging shootout. Now, get in this box that we've prepared for you, young woman: the victim box. Too bad that in your case, the victim box is a coffin. If you could only enlarge your perspective and contemplate the larger policy concepts. Over the vast expanse of people whose lives will be cradled and blanketed by the loving kindness of gun control — and all manner of other control — there will be more comfort, more caring, more lives saved.... in the mind of Think Progress, which must, of course, always think Progress! and, being dedicated to progress must know which way is forward. No distractions off the path can be tolerated. Of course, women's empowerment lies ahead on the forward path. So it can't be possible to think that an armed Kasandra Perkins is progress. That must be a wrong turn. How to see women's empowerment and gun control both together on the forward path? She's a victim. Package her that way. Package her neatly and stow her away, here, in this grave.

Yummy mockery.

Hybrid Piston/Jet Carrier fighter

Jet-powered flight was an idea whose time seemingly had come during World War II.  Germany fielded the Me-262, the UK fielded the Gloster Meteor, and the US introduced the P-80 Shooting Star.  But that last was purely land-based.  The Navy wanted in on the action.

The problem was that the jet engines of the day didn't provide the quick acceleration needed to launch the air frame off the short flight deck of a Carrier.  And so Admiral McCain (father of the future Senator) proposed a solution: why not both a jet and a piston engine?

The Ryan Fireball was the result.  It had both a 1300 HP Wright Cyclone propeller engine for takeoff and landing, and a GE turbojet engine.  It was perhaps the strangest hybrid of the war. It wasn't that fast - only 400 MPH under jet power left it more than 50 MPH slower than the Mustang.  It was lightly armed - four Ma-Deuce Browning .50 caliber machine guns, with 300 rounds each.  Not particularly impressive - no faster than the Corsair or Hellcat at more than twice the price.

But it was a jet, and it would take off and land on an aircraft carrier.  That wasn't enough.  Only 77 were built before the program was canceled.  It's a statement of just how invested the economy was in waging that war, that there was money to fund a cockamamie scheme like this - a brute force attempt to bring the jet age to the Pacific Fleet.  So much money that the result would be worse than both the current propeller fighters in service at the time.  Only one survives.

Seen at the dog park

Awwww:

Wolfgang isn't the youngest or smallest puppy at the dog park anymore.  Not by a long shot.

Win

Richard Blane, International Man of Mystery emails to point me to the music of Jacintha.  Wow.



She may be from Singapore, but she does this song up proud.

Advertizing for better network administrators

Now how do you find that pesky DHCP server?

Émile Waldteufel - The Skater's Waltz, Op. 183

We're surrounded by great music that we've very likely heard before - perhaps often before, where we find ourselves humming along - even though we don't know who wrote it or when.  This is one of those.

When we think of the great 19th Century Walzes, we think of Strauss.  Most have never heard of Émile Waldteufel who was born on this day in 1837.  This is odd, because Waldteufel was incredibly famous in his day, performing frequently for the French President and brought to London by no less than the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) to perform for Queen Victoria.

Perhaps it's that his name is misdirection - Waldteufel is German (from the Alsace region of France) even though he was French through and through.  Hailing from a musical family, he established his reputation in Paris at the Conservatory.  This piece, Les Patineurs, was composed after watching skaters at the rink in the Bois de Boulogne.  He was inspired by their moves, likening them to the dancers in a waltz.

You've very likely heard this before, and (like me) attributed it to Strauss. 

Holiday music

Well, it is the season, and it seems that everyone is synchronizing their house lights to either dubstep, Angry Birds, or Gangnam style.  Bah, humbug.  Here at Camp Borepatch, the guards will search you at the main Visitor's Gate* and will confiscate "Gangnam" anything.

But the season calls for holiday music.  OK, then, but this is "Fantasia Style".



* I'm sorry, but policy is policy.  I can't make any exceptions.

Munich, December 1996

Taken with my trusty Pentax K-1000.  That camera was like an old friend.  The kids were little (#2 Son was a couple weeks shy of his first birthday).  Munich at Christmas is a magical place, especially if you're lucky enough to have small children.

That was a store window.  #1 Son didn't want to leave.  Can't blame him, actually.

It seemed like I called the 2012 election outcome a year in advance

Looking back through my archives, I ran across this:

And so take a look at a hypothetical candidate that might sweep to power as a GOP nominee in 2012, with the Tea Party and Independents joining with Republicans for a landslide.  The winning platform is less centralization in Washington D.C, less government control, fewer government intrusion into things that government does poorly and has no business doing anyway.

The common denominator there?  All of those reduce the opportunity to feed the GOP party bureaucracy.  And so the bureaucracy fights any outsider who looks like he (or she) might upset the apple cart.  Campaigns of whispers from insiders to members of a biased media looking for dirt to prop up their Lightbringer and his party.  I don't for a second think that the paper thin harassment story against Herman Cain came from the Democrats.  It's a cold, dead certainty that it was the GOP machine that is trying to cut him down.

You see, Cain is very likely to be bad for business.  Well, bad for the GOP Bureaucracy's business, anyway.

And so they'd rather throw an election than give up their perks and opportunities for filthy lucre.  And what it's starting to look like is that they'll get someone safe (to them) like Romney, who will depress turnout from Tea Party and Independents, and so a GOP landslide will turn into four more years of Obama - and possibly even continued Democratic control of the Senate.

November 21, 2011.

Looking at the flailing that the Republican Party is doing right now in the budget negotiations with Obama (and the Copyright reform debacle) you can see this same dynamic play out.  Snouts in the trough.

Just how bad is the economy?

Smith & Wesson reports sales up 48%.  Captain Capitalism explains.

Man, that's one lousy economy.

Life is complicated

I'm behind in my posts for today, having wasted yesterday evening looking at assisted living centers near Camp Borepatch.  Mom's retirement community has told us that she needs more help than they're set up to give, and so we're going to have to move her.

My thought is a place near by, so that we could see her more than a couple times a year.  There are two within walking distance, so there's no shortage of options.  Older Brother is looking at places near his home as well. 

Mom is bummed out, as you'd expect.  Not only does she realize that she's losing her faculties, but she's looking about moving away from the area she and Dad chose to retire.  I'm convinced that having her close to family is critical, but expect her to be very unhappy that she can't get up to Santa Fe to visit Dad's grave.

Life is complicated.  I'll be back later.

Pearl Harbor salvage operations

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the work to re-float and salvage the damaged or sunken ships began.  It was a huge task.

The Navy has a lot of pictures of the effort.  It was unglamorous work, but the sort of thing that won the war.

Does the Second Amendment protect the right to use lasers against drones?

So drone use in these United States seems to be common, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is one of the most important organizations we have in America today.  While most of the country lays fast asleep to the dangers of the encroaching surveillance state, the EFF is always vigilantly at work on the front lines.  In their latest article, they show that military drones are already flying all over these United States and, using information received from a FOIA lawsuit they provide important details on what is flying and where.  You may be shocked at some of their conclusions.

And so to the heart of the argument.  Nobody argues that the First Amendment doesn't apply to offset printing, or the Internet, or twitter or email.  It's understood that speech is speech, no matter the form.  The question then is whether government surveillance is government surveillance no matter the form it takes - agents skulking by the window or reaper drones at 10,000 feet.

If so, then what would James Madison et al. say about the use of lasers to blind surveillance cameras sent without a warrant - and let's be grown up here: the chance that any of these drones flies with a warrant approaches zero.

Technologically-wise, it seems that it would not be too hard to use a laser to blind these things.  It might not be hard to set up a mesh network of citizen radar sites to identify the drones.

So here's the question: is it the second, the fourth,  or fifth that would protect you if you did this.

Before even Cretan Jupiter held the sceptre, before

an impious race feasted on slaughtered oxen,

golden Saturn lived such a life on Earth:

before they’d yet heard the blare of trumpets,

or the sword-blades ring, laid on the harsh anvil.

But we’ve crossed a vast expanse of space, and now

it’s time to loose the necks of our sweating team.

- Virgil, Geordics, Book II

NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day reminds us that the end of the year approaches.  Saturn's great storms echo on this orb in the Saturnalia, ancient Rome's year end festival loosening the necks of the sweating oxen.  Plan accordingly.

Rube Goldberg and the greatest video ever made

Rube Goldberg was a real guy, an engineer and a cartoonist.  He died on this day in 1970, after a long and renowned life sketching impossibly complicated machines that did simple tasks.  And made possible the greatest video ever made.

Rube Goldberg: SaLUTE!



You so want to watch this in full screen mode.

R.I.P Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck passed earlier this week after a long, successful career.  The airwaves (and the Intarwebz) have been filled with retrospectives - as you'd expect: he was enormously influential on the field of jazz.  You've heard some of this stuff, like this:



Me, I never much cared for his (or anyone's) style of "experimental" jazz.  That last song (his most famous by far) was in the very unusual 5/4 time.  It worked here.  Other efforts, not so much:

A musical tribute to bank fraud malware

Why do people write banking trojans?  This says it all.

Don't bank from your phone

Hackers stole 36 million euros via banking trojans:

Check Point has revealed how a sophisticated malware attack was used to steal an estimated €36 million from over 30,000 customers of over 30 banks in Italy, Spain, Germany and Holland over summer this year.

The theft used malware to target the PCs and mobile devices of banking customers. The attack also took advantage of SMS messages used by banks as part of customers’ secure login and authentication process.

A lot of this was via targeted attacks on people's cell phones.  My recommendation is that you do not ever use your cell phone to do online banking.  Ever.

The reason is that lost/stolen/compromised ATM cards are well understood and you'll probably have limited loss exposure with one of these.  Online trojans draining your account is a different story, and your bank may or may not cover your loss.

Credit card is best - you will actually have no liability at all if you report it as soon as you get your bill.

Memes. I love memes.

I put them on everything even Sundaes for the Lulz.

Srlsy.

No, it's the Klein Bottle of Pop

Srlsy.

Did everyone sleep through math class?

Sigh.

Mom doesn't need a retirement home, she needs assisted living.  3 months after moving into a retirement home.  It seems that her memory is no longer enough to live on her own, even in an Apartment setting.  This video is one that I wish I didn't understand, down in my marrow.

Big Brother is listening to you

Here's a heaping helping of Marketing FAIL:

It's a patent that sounds like a plot description for a science-fiction movie or the result of Apple's Siri and Google's AdSense mating. With it, Verizon could program its set-top boxes to survey a room to determine relevant ads to display either on your television or mobile phone. Sound a bit scary? It kind of is.

Verizon's technology can work a variety of ways. For starters, it can listen in on conversations - whether it be with someone else in the room or on the phone - and pick out keywords that would aide it in its duties.

We used to have Verizon FiOS back at Chez Borepatch.  If we still had it, I'd be looking for the microphone, with a pair of wire cutters.  Or looking for a new provider.

Why is this Marketing FAIL?  Probably this capability hasn't been deployed yet - it's engineering design.  So without any of the supposed benefit to Verizon, they're getting all the 1984 wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual negative publicity that something like this would generate.

And before anyone tells me that nobody cares about privacy, here's the question that I'd pose to Verizon's customer base:

How do you feel about Verizon listening to (and maybe watching) your kids while they watch Lion King?

You can phrase it a lot nastier than that, believe me - I'm just too full of sweetness and light to go there myself.  But if I were Verizon's competitors, that's exactly what would go into my next mass mailing.  I really think that this is the dumbest thing that I've seen in ten years.

Mmmm, Martini!

Not as in the drink, as in the rifle.

Tons of sweet historical gun pr0n over at Engineering Johnson's.  If you like that sort of thing as much as I do, get on over there.

The hardest Christmas present I ever made

We're told that a present we make is more valuable than one we buy.  It is a gift that comes from the heart.  I made one of those for Mom.

Blog2print will take some (or all) of your blog posts and turn it into a printed book.  Mom doesn't read my blog, and so I made a book for her - the posts I wrote about Dad.

It's easy, although I'd like a better way to edit it online before it gets printed.  I could actually do that myself, downloading all the posts (and comments), editing them in a word processor, and then taking them to Staples or some such.  That would take a weekend or more.

More.

The problem isn't the edit.  The problem is all that raw emotion.  It's nearly two years he's been gone, and while I think about him every day, the pain had turned into more of a dull ache.  Until the edit.  That was picking a scab.

And so even though I don't like the formatting, I'm getting the book.  I'll probably do it again, with better formatting some day.  But not this day.

A present we make has more meaning than one we buy.  Except the ones we buy with pain.

Cute overload

Just because.

That right there's going to leave a mark

It's just sad how Piers Morgan makes himself look like a drooling moron.

Windows users, disable autorun

Autorun is when you put a CD or DVD in the drive of your computer and it automatically starts up a program that's on the disk.  Unfortunately, a malware is actively targeting this capability.  All Windows users should disable autorun.  Microsoft has a nice support landing page for pretty much all versions of Windows, with instructions.

Once you've done this you'll have to open Windows Explorer when you put the disk in the drive, and double click on the program.  Since you probably hardly ever get software on disks, the annoyance is rare and the security benefit is high.

Note that if you put a music CD in the drive your music player (say, iTunes) will pop up automatically, even with autorun disabled.  This isn't a security problem because your music player is already installed on your computer.  You shouldn't notice anything at all here.

UPDATE 4 December 2012 14:42: I should have said that the real risk of autorun is not CD/DVD drives, but rather USB flash drives and network shares.  That's how the malware is spreading.

I'd get some of this

PETA BBQ sauce:

The description is pretty righteous:

From the Chile Pepper Republic comes another sauce for People for the Eating of Tasty Animals. Where's the beef ...and the veal, pork, and chicken too? And don't forget the whale, dolphin, baby seal, and panda. Loving all God's creatures next to my potatoes.

Tasty mockery, right there.

Oh, well played

The new generation of crooners

Here in Camp Borepatch we're huge fans of the crooners of the 1940s - 1960s.  Dean Martin is my favorite, but that's a matter of taste - #2 Son is partial to Bing Crosby.  In the '90s Harry Connick tried to bring this back single handedly, but never got the air time I thought he deserved.

Living out of touch with all things hip as I am wont to do, I hadn't realized that there is a sensation out there called Michael Bublé. Young, handsome, and with an outstanding voice very much in the Dean Martin tradition. And narrow neckties for his suits.

Just how out of touch am I?  He's won three Grammys and sold 30 Million records.  For the rest of you who are as out of touch as I, here he is doing a great old Bing Crosby Christmas number with one of my favorite Country singers, Kellie Pickler.

2012's most popular crummy passwords

The hacktivist group Anonymous has released the 25 most popular crummy passwords from the sites they've hacked.  Reading the list is really rather depressing:

1. password (unchanged)
2. 123456 (unchanged)
3. 12345678 (unchanged)
4. abc123 (up one)
5. qwerty (down one)
6. monkey (unchanged)
7. letmein (up one)
8. dragon (up two)
9. 111111 (up three)
10. baseball (up one)
11. iloveyou (up two)
12. trustno1 (down three)
13. 1234567 (down six)
14. sunshine (up one)
15. master (down one)
16. 123123 (up four)
17. welcome (new entry!)
18. shadow (up one)
19. ashley (down three)
20. football (up five)
21. jesus (new entry!)
22. michael (up two)
23. ninja (new entry!)
24. mustang (new entry!)
25. password1 (new entry!)

The parenthetical comments say how this particular l4M3 password changed from last year's list.  But srlsy - the top lame password is "password"?  And "123456" - now where have I heard that before?



Needless to say, if you have any of these as your password, change it tout suite.  If you have a password that is a word found in a dictionary, change it these are notoriously weak and hackers have been cracking them at will for more than a decade.

The best passwords are hard to guess/easy to remember.  I like passphrases - take the first letter of each word in a sentence>  For example:

Borepatch makes my security extra crazy 1337! becomes "Bmmsec1!" (don't leave off the punctuation character).  Strong password, easy to remember.  Because only an idiot would use "123456" ... although it seems that 37% of the passwords at the Greek Finance Ministry used that.  Opa!

Keep yer Gubmint spies off my Internet searches

Blogbrother PISSED emails me about a neat anonymous search engine, ixquick.  It anonymizes your searches so that prying eyes can't recover it.  They also have an anonymous proxy service which is particularly interesting when you think about Internet telephony.

You can use either the generic service which queries the top search engines, or use their StartPage® option which uses Google's results.  However, unlike Google it doesn't track your IP and strips all identifying info from the query.